The 1453 Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople Was the Most Shocking Event in Europe in Centuries

1453 was the most shocking year in Europe since the starting of the Bubonic Plague (1347), the beginning of the First Crusade (1095), or the crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800. Many called it the Year the Middle Ages ended. That’s because the Ottomans, an upstart empire less than two centuries removed from being a semi-nomadic chieftainship and vassal state of the Mongols, conquered Constantinople, the crown jewel of Eastern Christendom and the “still-beating heart of antiquity”

But it wasn't just the ramifications of the conquest that were so shocking. The conquest itself altered the way that sieges had been waged throughout the Middle Ages. Before, large city walls made a city nearly unconquerable (and Constantinople had the largest in the world, making the city able to repel over a dozen sieges since the time of Attila the Hun). But with the invention of gunpowder and the ability to forge large cannons, now no city was safe from a well-equipped army with a determined ruler. And no ruler was more determined than Mehmet, a 21-year-old sultan who declared that "I will take Constantinople, or Constantinople will take me."

Learn how Mehmet, the 21-year-old Sultan, conquered the city by assembling an army of 100,000, commissioned a cannon that could fire a 1,200-pound ball, and had warships hauled out of the water and over hills in order to enter the enemy’s harbor.